Ah, the weekend. Time for BAD, and time for bad basketball. We're throwing the double-team on you tonight. I'll be covering tonight's games, and Wild Yams will be previewing the Saturday and Sunday games.

In case you didn't know already, there are no ESPN games tonight, but we will have two afternoon games on ABC this Sunday. Oh, and even though I finally got the NBA League Pass Broadband deal, I still won't be able to watch Celtics/Hawks tonight. It's nationally broadcast on NBA TV (which my cable provider does not offer), so it's blacked out from online coverage. Ugh.

Nationally Televised Friday Games:Celtics at Hawks: The Hawks who have owned the C's this year? Gimpy KG playing like somebody took out his knee with a shotgun? I don't want to talk about this game. I'm just going to assume this will be another Hawks win and try to move on.

Lakers at 76ers: The 76ers actually have won more games on the road than at home this year. Then again, when you only have 15 total wins, that's not that hard to do I suppose...

Bulls at Hornets: Not only have the Bulls managed to win four straight on the road against tough competition, they've held those opponents to 49% shooting. This team never played defense like that last year or earlier this year. Somebody check their shoes for Flubber!

Heat at Pistons: The Heat are already, of course, the "Bipolar Girlfriend at That Time of the Month on Crystal Meth" team of 2009-2010, but now they're also without Michael Beasley? Yeah, this is another one of those "flip a coin" games.

Clippers at Timberwolves: The Los Angeles "They Are Who We Thought They Were" Clippers and the Timberpoops? Facepalm.

Nuggets at Thunder: The Nuggets are on fire like an NBA Jam player, doing everything but dunking from the 3-point-line, and have won 8 straight. The Thunder have dropped three straight. Now watch OKC win this one to confuse us all.

Frail Blazers at Rockets: Houston has lost three straight home games. That hurts, but probably not as much as Brandon Roy's injury.

Grizzlies at Spurs: Accuscore has the Spurs listed as 74% favorites in this game despite Tony Parker's injury. I don't buy that. Then again, they were right about the Suns last night, unlike me, so forget I said anything.

Kings at Jazz: With the way the Jazz are shooting right now, I wouldn't want to be the Purple Paupers. (You know, aside from the whole "making tons of money for playing a game" part.)

Bobcats at Warriors: Ooh. Stephen Jackson's first game at the Oracle Arena since his November trade! This could be fun.

Nationally Televised Saturday Game:Hawks at Magic: The Hawks are only one game over .500 on the road to begin with, so playing in Orlando one night after playing Boston probably isn't gonna help improve that record much.

All The Other Saturday Games:Knicks at WizardsGenerals Bullets: Here it is, your Basketbawful Game of the Night. Tune in to see David Lee continue his campaign to be the first All Star alternate for the East should someone get hurt in the next couple weeks.

Hornets at Grizzlies: Look who's buzzing into Gay-Mayo country this weekend. Maybe CP3 can give first time All Star Zack Randolph some tips about do's and don'ts for when he shows up in Dallas next month.

Heat at Bucks: I'm sure all the guys from Miami and just thrilled to be spending a weekend in late January in picturesque Milwaukee. If depression sets in too bad, the Bucks might get an easy win out of this.

Frail Blazers at Mavs: Here's hoping the local hospitals in Big D have been put on full alert, what with Portland limping into town.

Bobcats at Kings: Charlotte's still looking for their fifth road win on the year, and Sacramento might just be willing to oblige these feisty Cats as newly-named All Star Gerald Wallace goes back to where his whole career began.

Nationally Televised Sunday Games:

Nuggets at Spurs: Are Melo and Tony Parker gonna actually suit up for this one? It's on ABC, after all.

Suns at Rockets: With the streak of winless games on TNT behind them, Phoenix looks to resume the tailspin they were in. Also, the next time Amar'''''''e plays a game in Texas it might be in a Spurs uniform, so enjoy this current version while you can.

All The Other Sunday Games:

Clippers at Crabs: Oy, this could get ugly. No word yet on whether the Quicken Loans Arena staff has reinforced the Gatorade tray by the Crabs bench, but considering it's The Other LA Team, there's probably no rush on that for now.

Magic at Pistons: Considering Detroit is 10-4 against Orlando over the last two plus seasons, it would appear that they are the Magicians' Walton's foot. Who knew?

76ers at Nyets: Facing some stiff competition from that Knicks-Wolves game below, this one narrowly edged it out to capture Basketbawful Game of the Night honors.

Pacers at Craptors: Toronto's actually looking to drop that 'C' in front of their team's name, especially if they keep up the 14-5 record they've amassed in their last 19 games. Beating weak teams like Indiana at home can go a long way to getting that done.

Knicks at Timberwolves: In the last week these two teams have lost games by 33 and 50, but they also just played each other on Tuesday and NY won by 27, so I'm thinking the Knicks might have a good chance in this one.

Warriors at Thunder: I can't wait to see if Nellie's gonna change his clothes for this game. BTW, check out the first result on Google images for "Don Nelson". Scary.

Would anyone else be interested in watching a reality show where we take every insane bastard in the Association (I'm looking at you, Ron Artest) and just put them in a house together one summer? It'd be a totally different syle of insanity than Jersey Shore, but it'd be on the same level of overall awesomeness I bet.

Anyone remember a commercial with Tim Duncan in it a handful of years ago (I really couldn't say how long ago, but I don't really think more than 10 years...?) where he's buying a car and each time the salesman tries to seal the deal Duncan has his typical blank face on. The salesman gets really uncomfortable under Duncan's gaze and keeps lowering the price and offering him a better package. At the end, when the salesman looks down at his paper, Duncan cracks a very uncharacteristic grin, but snaps back to his stone face when the salesman looks back up.

I don't remember what the commercial was for, though I can probably safely assume it was a Sportscenter commercial or something. I can't for the life of me find the commercial anywhere online. It's one of my favorite commercials of all time and if anyone could find it I'd be pretty damn grateful.

Mostly, I just need verification that this commercial actually existed.

6. "The Charles Barkley Show" -- Kenan Thompson portrays Barkley hosting a talk show in a casino to pay back gambling debts. He describes how he got on the Olympic "Dream Team," saying: "I got a call from Michael Jordan, saying 'Hey, you wanna go play poker in Barcelona for two weeks? Here's the catch. We gotta leave the casino for two hours to beat Angola by 80 points.'" Only thing that would have made it better was if they had actually used Barkley.

LotharBot: Well, if you lose a lot of games but entertainingly score in the triple digits most of the time, you can't be ALL that bad, right?

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Dan B.: No, I don't feel bad for Washington, because Abe Pollin and co. gave Hibachi that overwrought blank check after what, two straight first round losses? By that token, then Knee-Mac should have a bigger contract than King Crab, The Truth, and Lord Mamba combined - and hey, Knee-Mac was ALMOST an all-star this year!!!

Nyets currently pissing away a lead in the 4th quarter. They led essentially the whole game and are now losing by three points as Earl Boykins took over in the latter statges of the 3rd quarter off the bench.

LeBron and the Cavs in general: I mean, LeBron was awesome (22 points, 13 assists), but he was only 10 of 17 on free throws, and the Cavs overall were 23 of 44. That's an awful lot of points to leave on the table.

Also, I didn't watch the game, and the Pacers shot 23 more field goal attempts than the Cavs, but they only shot five free throws. Seems to be so low it's an outlier!

Pacers' gunners: Granger was 6 of 23; Hibbert was 2 of 9; Brandon Rush was 5 of 14; Dunleavy was 2 of 8. But if everyone's shooting terrible, to whom do you pass, I guess, huh?

5: The Clippers' Chris Kaman, edged out of an All-Star berth by Randolph, recently became just the fifth center in the league to post two 20-point games in the same season in head-to-head starts against Washington's Brendan Haywood. The others: Shaquille O'Neal (2004-05 season and 2005-06), Orlando's Dwight Howard (2006-07), Milwaukee's Andrew Bogut (2007-08) and Phoenix's Amare Stoudemire (2007-2008).

Seriously, I had to read that four times before it actually made sense. Then I realised they were talking about Brendan Haywood. Then it didn't make sense again.

Horford is gonna play in the ASG but Josh Smith isn't?! That blows my mind. Smith is on the same team and is more productive/important, plus his game is much more suited for the ASG (crazy dunks and blocks).

Tyreke "The Freak" Evans was not much of a freakshow tonight, due to some hip injury from last night or so that Westphal mentioned in the post-game presser - 4 points, 7 assists. Not exactly an inspiring statline.

zyth, I coulda sworn it was JR Smith who got the ego-ectomy courtesy of One Shoe Durant. Was it Aflack?

Also, I nominate the Nuggets for getting outscored 52-18 (I think) in the paint by the Thunder. Not a recipie for success.

As a Nuggets fan, I was already cringing about 3 minutes into the game. The Thunder were being super physical, and I was yelling at the refs to call something (most games, they woulda.) When I realized they were going to allow that level of play, I was yelling at the Nugs to match the Thunder's physicality... but wouldn't you know it, a team the haters have called the "Thuggets" for years -- a team with guys like KMart and Nene -- couldn't match the physicality of such rough-and-tumble guys as Nenad Kristic and Nick Collison. I eventually had to shut the game off because my infant son was picking up on my rage and starting to get angry himself.

Way to defend your home court there, Boston. The Celtics were outscored 20-8 to finish the game over the last 9 minutes. Mr. Bawful can complain about how terrible the scheduling is that Boston had to play Orlando, Atlanta and then LA in consecutive games, but the Lakers have been on the road now for two straight weeks. The Celtics are currently only 6-11 since Christmas and have slid down to the 4th seed in the East. Cue the excuses.

BTW, did anyone notice that the announcers today mentioned it had been three years to the day since the Boston crowd chanted "MVP" for Kobe? I wonder if someone over at ABC is reading this site.

I'm sure ESPN will give Bryant all the love for making the game winner, but 18-0 for the Lakers in points in the paint for the fourth quarter. That front court delivered today, particularly in stopping Rondo.

Still, the Lakers were up 11 after the 1st, then blew that lead until they were down by 11. At least they got it over with early, instead of blowing it late and losing.

Just FYI, the Lakers actually will finish the season with the toughest schedule they'll have had in a number of years. The beginning being so easy ultimately won't matter, since everything balances out. This is stolen from Silver Screen & Roll:

They have the most back-2-backs on the road (the hardest games to win) at 18. Cleveland, Boston, Orlando and Denver have 11, 11, 13, and 15 respectively.

They actually catch opponents on a back-2-back the least amount as well (only 9 times, and only 3 of those are at Staples). This is 5 less games than the next unfortunate team (Portland and Oklahoma at 14). Compare this with Denver, who catches tired opponents an astonishing 24 times.

Just as an example of this, when the Lakers go to Memphis tomorrow it will be the 8th game of this current road trip (the longest road trip any team in the league will take this season), and tomorrow will be their third back to back game on this road trip alone. If anyone should be complaining about the schedule this year, it's LA. Boston having to play three tough opponents in a row is no real excuse for losing, and that's especially true when they go on to lose all three games. I'm just sayin'.

"Last play... I'm gonna take responsibility for that [really now]... We tried to run something that was perhaps a little tricky [so you AND the players were too stupid to pull it off. Got it.]... It was basically a series of flairs is what it ends up, uhm, but, it was a play you typically run from the full court, and we tried to run it at the half court [you are all awful]..."